If Intel Has Its Way, Computers Will Be Able To Interact With You Just Like A Human Can

Intel wants to take the fiction out of science fiction with a host of new technologies that it plans to release this year.

The speed and capabilities of computers has continued to double over the years thanks to the progression of Moore's Law, but Intel wants to move beyond just increasing processing power.

"We need to add senses to the brain," Intel senior vice president Mooly Eden said at the company's CES conference today. Intel wants to give computers not only maximum processing power, but the eyes, ears, voice, touch, emotion recognition, and context to create natural, intuitive, and immersive life-like interactions between humans and their devices.

During Eden's presentation, he demoed a handful of new technologies, including the Intel RealSense 3D camera that lets devices see depth in the same way that human eyes can. These cameras can also detect movement for highly accurate gesture control and facial features for understanding emotion.

For example, we watched a woman explore a Google Maps landscape just by moving her eyes and face. We saw a little girl use her hands to play with different scenes that would automatically change as someone progressed through the pages of the storybook that they were reading her out loud. You can play games with your hands, interact with your desktop by pinching your fingers and flicking your wrist, and edit pictures by changing components depending on their depth.

Business Insider / Jillian D'Onfro

Intel's 3D camera and sensor are extremely thin, about as thin as two quarters stacked together. Intel will work with partners like Asus, Dell, Acer, NEC, HP, Fujitsu, and Lenovo to implement the technology into tablets, laptops, and other devices.

By equipping devices with technologies that mimic human sense in a more genuine way, Intel hopes to transform and push forward machine interaction with learning, communication, and gaming.

"Touch is not intuitive, touch is not natural," Eden said. People communicate more with their voices than with their hands, so Intel is also focusing on progressing voice recognition along with gesture recognition. In a demo, we saw a computer equipped with Intel's Dragon voice recognition software pull up Hulu when the user said "I want to watch an episode of Family Guy," and Yelp when he asked for a local humus restaurant.

To demonstrate Intel's over-arching goal of creating technology that is natural, intuitive, and immersive, Eden also showed this video, and, while not new, it's pretty amusing. Check it out: